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I met this guy online about a year ago — on XBox Live, playing a game. We became friends and have been talking seriously and faithfully every day (all day; sending hundreds of texts daily) for about a month. He is about 1,300 miles away. He is a virgin, and he has never been in a serious relationship. We are the same age. He has told me that I’m beautiful, that he loves my personality, and that he wants to meet me more than he’s ever wanted to meet anybody. He is pretty much my dream guy. We have so much in common, and even after tens of thousands of text messages,…

I’m a military spouse and the moves, deployments, loss of employment (multiple times due to moving), full-time single parenting, and general hard luck have taken their toll. To add to that is the almost unavoidable infidelity on my husband’s part. I mean, by now I’m a machine. I don’t do emotional, I don’t do intimacy, I don’t do connecting. I certainly try, but it’s tough when I rarely or never see my husband. And this has been, jeeze, six years now. I can handle all of this, but the infidelity stings. The fact that he generally crowd-sources emotional support and looks everywhere but home for companionship stings. I read all of those…

It’s time again for Shortcuts. For every question, I’ll give my advice in just a few sentences, because sometimes the answer to a person’s question is so obvious and the need to hear it so great, being as clear and frank as possible is simply the best way to go.

I’m a 21-year-old, gay college senior and just got out of a year-long relationship. I was in love for the first time. It’s not that I was inexperienced before I met him. I’ve had experiences that have built large walls around my heart, but this relationship was real and mature. It was everything that I thought I deserved after all the crashing and burning I went through with dating over the past few years. The day we broke up, he ended up with a guy whom he was friends with throughout our entire relationship, whom I had always had suspicions about. It’s becoming more and more evident that my ex cheated, but…

I am 20 years old and my boyfriend is 22. We have been together for six years now! Lately, he has been hinting that he’s going to propose. I don’t know how I feel about this. I love him and we have a great friendship (we’ve known each other since elementary!), but there are some issues. First of all, he has a job where he works only in the summer and during the winter he doesn’t even bother looking for another job. He dropped out of high school and hasn’t received his GED. I graduated high school, I’m attending college and have a fulltime job. Also, I dont really want to have…

New readers, welcome to Dear Wendy, a relationship advice blog. If you don’t find the info you need in this column, please visit the Dear Wendy archives or the forums (you can even start your own thread), or submit a question for advice. I’m in my early 30s and I’ve had two relationships in my life. My first boyfriend and I were together for five years. Unfortunately, I was miserable for three of those years, but was so scared of being alone again that I stayed in the relationship hating him (and myself) ’til neither of us could stand it anymore. I lost my virginity to him when I was 20. After…

It’s time again for Shortcuts. For every question, I’ll give my advice in just a few sentences, because sometimes the answer to a person’s question is so obvious and the need to hear it so great, being as clear and frank as possible is simply the best way to go.